week 5

Hey family, how are you all this week?

i hope you are all still alive and well, i'm guessing that mom and the kids are getting home tomorrow?  i hope that everyone had fun and learned alot.  i only have a few memories of when we went on the last BIG church history trip cause i was kinda young i think.  well we had a great week, super busy, we taught a ton of lessons and recieved alot of success from the lord.  we were blessed with 2 new investigators and alot of opportunities to improve.  we have witnessed many miricles in my short time here, one of the more prominate ones being that of the grumpy less active that slowly got more happier the longer we stayed, and by the time we left she was super happy to have had us over and smiling and stuff, so we taught this less active yesterday and we didn't know what to expect as we approached the door, whether she would be mad and scary looking at the beginning and then start to soften up at the end or whether she would be happy right from the get go.... well thankfully it was the latter, she was super happy, a completely changed person, she has, in a short period of 3 visits, become one of my favorite people, she is smiling and happy and participates, she still has a long way to go but she is well on the path toward reactivating.  we were also able to teach our less active guatamalan family for really the 1st time this past week!  they were found tracting, they were baptised in guatemala and moved to the states like 15 or more years ago and since they moved here they haven't gone to church once.... sooooo needless to say we had no record of them, but we found them and they are awesome, I LOVE GUATEMALANS!!!!  all are super funny and way fun to be around.  we had a lesson on prayer and the dad was like "how would you put prayer into a modern term?" and he was asking super good questions about prayer, we went into this huge analogy about how prayer is making a phone call to God and so then he asked, "what is God's number?" haha it was funny, we told him that in order to reach him we have to dial "or pray right" so we taught him the steps of prayer and at the end of the lesson he prayed, it was excellent!!  

Esmeralda is also progressing very rapidly, she is all gung-ho about everything, her date is the 14th of August and she is doing good, except for she was sick yesterday so she wasn't able to go to church, but she is still awesome.  Sixto is being a bit of a bum, he isn't keeping commitments and we think he may just be telling us what we want to hear, we'll see what happens with him this week.  OH also, got a big surprise last week.  we got news that we will be going to bakersfield next week from tuesday to friday for one of the new leadership training meetings..... we aren't going back to my area, we're going to North bakersfield zone, we're going back to Elder Skovran's 1st area, i'm soooo jealious, hopefully we can go back to south bakes next time we have this meeting cause i really miss the Quels, SPEAKING OF WHICH, they are getting sealed at the end of AUGUST!!!!! and i might get to go!!!!  i'm super excited and i hope everything works out ok, i sent them a letter asking for the exact date and time so i can ask president.  anywho, so we're not going to be in our area for the entire week 6 almost, soooo our area is going to die.... we get back one day before Esmeralda's scheduled baptisimal interview, so we have to prepare her well cause we won't have much time to teach her before her date during week 6.  ahhh we also met a crazy this week, his name is jose and he is crazy, he thinks that he is reincarnated and that Heavenly Father has rejected christ for a reason i won't tell you and that he has chosen him (jose) as his new "only begotten" he also talkes to god quite frequently, which is good, except the sensation he says he feels and the way that he talkes to God sounds very much like some very hard core drugs to me.... oh, and heavenly Father apparently lives in a castle made out of crystal... could be.... i don't know..... the 1st thing that came to my mind was "so God lives on Krypton...." ANYWHO, he was quite interesting.  well my time is up, we are having a Zone Activity now so i gotta get running, i love you all and hope and pray for your continued safty and getting blessings and stuff ;]

Love,

Elder Larsen

week 4

Dear Family,

well, i'm probably on the nicest computer of my entire mission today, flat High Def screen, nice keyboard, and fast internet....it's quite nice.  so we had an excellent week, very successful.  we invited one of our investigators to baptism and he accepted, we're not 100% sure how commited he is, but we're working with him on it.  we met most of our goals and have a ton of potential with alot of our investigators.  we worked hard and had alot of success.  so your trip sounds super fun mom, i;m kinda jealous, but thats ok cause you and i got our own mini church history/temple hopping trip so i will survive haha.  you probably saw sister hanson or her parents at the hill cumorah pagent cause they are in charge of it.  pretty nifty eh?  

so we had Zone Conference on Friday down in Solvang, this little dutch town, it seriously looks like a small dutch village, it's super cool looking, when we come back to visit we have to go there.  anywho, so Brother Heaton and Brother Jarman came to instruct us a little about the new changes that are being made in all of the missions.  it was super cool, we talked about how important prayer really is and how important it is for them to pray in that first visit.  so we did alot of role plays and really focused on getting them to kneel and say the closing prayer and ask specifically if what we had just taught them was true or not.  we applied it with 3 of our invistigators that same day and saw amazing success, the spirit, that feeling of peace was definatly there and plus now they are more likely to pray on their own, cause alot of people say they pray, but most have never prayed the correct way before, so that is why it is so crucial that they pray in this first visit so that we can see and evaluate their prayer, it was pure awesome-ness.  the 2nd thing that was taught to us is how to use the book of mormon effectivly in our teaching as well as how to introduce it.  i learned a little but me and elder skovran were already doing like 95% of what they taught us... not to say we're "that good" or anything, but we did learn and practice how to read with them in the scriptures, cause, just like prayer, if we read with them and help them to understand the scriptures when we are with them, they are more likely to read and understand them on their own, which is crucial to be able to receive revelation through the BOM.  it was a very very different Zone Conference but it was very benificial and  a good use of time as well, i liked it alot..... and because of the changes in mission schedule, i only have one more zone conference left.... so i'm kinda sad... no i'm really sad that i don't get to see this new program take affect, cause just like when preach my gosple came out it made a better missionary, this new program and way of doing things is going to make a new calibur of missionary and i'm going to miss the majority of it, lucky brandon and taylor and jordan and derek, this is going to be the coolest and best time to be a missionary that the world has ever seen since the beginning of time.  anywho, i hope you all have a wonderful week, i'll write brandon an email, i'll also write him a letter if i get a chance, so hard to find time to do stuff..... i love you all.

Elder Larsen#1

big changes

Dear Family,

howdy do?  man, HUGE changes have been made in the life of Elder Larsen #1......Zone Leader, gigantic area, mas responsabilidad......so my zone is quite large, land wise, although we are probably the smallest missionary wise, we have 12 missionaries in the zone, 2 for every ward minus us, cause we have the spanish branch and the YSA ward....i went to church in english for the 1st time on my mission.....soooo weird, i was asked to give the opening prayer and i butchered it....man.....but i've been meeting alot of cool people, both spanish and english.  oh and we are the only two spanish missionaries in the entire zone, i feel so alone sometimes, no other spanish missionaries minus my companion....so needless to say my area is huge as well...cause my area is the entire zone.  tons of spanish people here in santa maria, i don't blame them cause the weather is absolutely perfect, and i joke not, 70, 75 on a hot day, always a nice breeze, super perfect weather, it does even get pretty chilly at night so that is awesome too!  i like this area alot, my companion's name is Elder Skovran, he is pretty cool, he has 13 months on the mission and has been here in santa maria for only 6 weeks longer than me, his companion before me was elder durrant, who is know a ZL in Bakersfield, all i do is follow elder durrant around haha.  elder skovran is from tennesse and talks very slow and articulated spanish, so he's good for me, he doesn't have a southern accent though, and he only weights like 130, super skinny kid but in very good shape.  we had a pretty good week trying to build up the spanish and YSA units here.  it's very different working in english, i still highly prefer spanish work, plus it's super hard to work in a ysa ward, it's basically just pure member referals, cause it's hard to find investigators who fall under the age of 18 to 30.  we found 2 new investigators this week, both seem to be really promising, we had a really good spiritual fast sunday and it was cool to see the gosple in spanish and english and know that the spirit works in both languages.  in our spanish branch here, which is very very small, we have a bunch of argentines, an entire family and 2 other women.  it's craazy to hear them talk, soooo weird, it's a bit hard to understand them but after a while you get the accent and their way of speaking down.  they were super upset when argentinia lost to germany in the soccer world cup.  we live in a farily nice apartment, nicer than my last one, we live with 2 other elders, elder simmons and elder knight, both very cool.  elder simmons is one transfer older than me, we get along pretty good.  so we get to drive all the way down to ventura tonight to stay the night in the mission president's home so we can have ZLC, Zone Leaders Counsil, tomorrow.  all the zone leaders from the entire mission come to the meeting and we discuss mission needs and stuff like that.  it's supposedly very very fun and uplifting, i'm looking forward to it alot.  i hope to hear from you soon, remember that i love you alot, and think and pray for you daily.  have a safe week.

Love,

Elder Larsen